Is there anybody out there that could please give me some pointers as to where to start? I'm a regular poster but have obviously namechanged in case anyone recognises me or this situation.
Brief background: My mum had inherited some land when my dad died that his business was on, my dad and gm owned it 50:50. The family business was still running on the land, uncle had taken it over, and he paid rent to her.
My mum decided to give the land to my sister and me in order to remove it from her estate for tax purposes. Around this time my nan died and decided to leave her 50% of the land to my cousins, but with the proviso that uncle had use of it for the family company for as long as he wanted.
Somewhere along the line, seems that my uncle put the land into a trust for my cousins to enable him to use it, he and the (now retired) solicitor were the trustees, mum at this point didn't know about the trust.
Mum used the same solicitor (he was originally my dad's solicitor and didn't say at any point there was a conflict of interest as he was also my uncle's solicitor) - she asked him to transfer it over to us, saying the reason she was doing so was to get it out of her estate. My uncle turned up with lots of documents for her to sign, saying that it would be much easier if it was all in trust, then my cousins' could be beneficiaries of the rent too (he was by this time selling the business to new people and therefore cousins would be getting rent for the first time). When my mum questioned it, he said she would be the trustee as he didn't want the new buyers to be put off by having to deal with lots of people as land owners and also she lives just down the road so was easily contactable, could make a decision if one was needed without needing to get hold of both of her dd's etc. So she agreed.
The company that bought my family company went bust a little while ago, but our 'bit' has been bought out and is now a going concern again, hence looking back through all these documents and needing to create a new lease and get everything shipshape. We thought it would be a simple matter of her
To our horror, it turns out that the solicitor didn't transfer ownership of the land - just the beneficiary interest in it - to my sister and me. Turns out we had sort of raised this with them at the time - I'd sent them an email asking, as one of the land owners, for a version of documents to approve prior to things being agreed. Email back had said that we weren't owners, mum was. I'd passed this on to mum and she'd tried to contact the solicitor but never heard back, then she was away, then ill and it slipped through the net. In hindsight she was naive - she knew she'd asked him to transfer ownership to us for inheritance tax purposes, so she couldn't believe that he wouldn't have done that. She didn't even know it was possible to pass over a beneficiary interest in something while retaining ownership. It never occurred to her that they wouldn't have done what she asked, and thought it must have been a mix up. And in separate hindsight - she now wonders if uncle and solicitor cooked this up between them as it suited them, then just blinded her with lots of weasly words and told her it was all sorted as she wanted and just got her to sign on the dotted line for the 'transfer' forgetting to mention in simple english she wasn't transferring it out of her estate...
It also seems likely that the land was all put into the trust by my uncle without my mother knowing about it - despite the fact that she owned half of it - partly due to the fact that one cousin at the time was going through a divorce and he saw this as a way to hide an asset from her general assets as she didn't know that she owned it, IYSWIM. It also suited my uncle significantly to have just my mum to deal with as an owner rather than having to deal with both my sister and me.
So - what next? (apart from panic obviously!)
The original solicitor has retired. The new solicitor working on the case for us has said that it is going to cost at least £1000 to start to dig into the history of the trust, find out what happened when it set it up and where it stands now. We obviously feel pretty aggrieved at having to pay for this as we feel it is their problem and what's more, it's now causing us big problems when we really don't need them (ie trying to get the new lease sorted out asap, but we can't as the right names with the right owners need to be on the documents). In the longer term there are other things like if my mum should die sooner than 7 years (god willing she won't but she is almost 80 now so there are no guarantees that she will still be around then) then we are going to be landed with a much bigger inheritance tax bill than we would have done (this happened about 10 years ago so she was thinking it was happily out of her estate), and if we eventually sell it, we will have potentially much bigger capital gains taxes to pay as we won't have as long to offset it against. And whilst it is industrial land at the moment, there is a good chance that in a few years time it could be good building land so whilst it is not worth lots now, it might be then, so would potentially be a big capital gain looking at value now to then.
I don't have lots of money spare to pay for all this - I'm a SAHM as is dsis, mum doesn't have loads of cash floating around. It's the way that the solicitor has blandly said that it will cost a £1000 just to start looking at this that is worrying, could end up costing a lot more than that.
And separately there's the ethics of the solicitor that created the trust and put mum's land into it without her knowing, which seems pretty outrageous behaviour.
...
So (if you've made it this far - big congratulations if you have!) what do you think we should do? Would you pay to investigate? the fact that things have been left half undone - my aunt is still listed as the other land owner and trustee - she died a few years ago, after my uncle, so we can't just leave it as it is as that needs to be sorted out - the solicitors involved also were the ones that tied up and sorted out her estate so no idea why they didn't do anything about that when she died but they are refusing to do nothing because they are insisting it's right going forward (if only they were that good at doing what they had been asked years ago!)
Or should they investigate as the problem is of their doing or should we be complaining to the Law Society or whoever is the solicitor watchdog these days - and would it make any difference anyway as the guy who did it all is now retired and not covered by insurance (cousin spoke to him recently not realising he was retired - the insurance thing was one of the first things he said to him!).
Head's just swimming and not knowing where to even start thinking about things. Any help or pointers in the right direction would be fantastic - so many thanks in anticipation.
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you have any legal concerns we suggest you consult a solicitor.
Legal matters
Discovered that a solicitor hadn't followed my mum's instructions and transferred land properly when asked to - please help! (quite long, sorry)
7 replies
confuugled · 13/12/2012 22:54
OP posts:
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.